(L to R) Max Worthington, Dan Rieder, Janey Groseth, Sonny Holland

'Cheers to 100 Years,' the MSU Alumni Association celebrates in 2003
by Brenda McDonald MSU Communications Services
Instead of blue bloods, you could call them blue and gold bloods. Montana State Universityıs Alumni Association directors over its 100-year history have lived and breathed service to MSU.
The living association directors are not just native Montanans, but graduates of MSU that have been a part of Montana State long before they took the helm of the association.
Max Worthington, '32 PE, came to the Alumni Association in 1948 after a standout athletic career at MSC and then as an assistant basketball and football coach.
In the postwar period, Worthington had the daunting task of finding alumni and reconnecting people to the campus.
"He made people realize the strength and power of alumni organizations," said former Alumni Association director Sonny Holland, '60 IA, '65 M. "He's the reason the Alumni Association is as strong as it is." Worthington later went on to become Dean of Students at MSU.
Holland himself is known far and wide as a "super ambassador"for MSU. From his beginnings as a student athlete gridiron star to years as MSUıs most successful football coach, he was known for a combination of commitment, care and loyalty.
In 1979 he became MSUıs Alumni Association director and established many programs that are still staples of the Alumni Association, including the Awards for Excellence.
The Awards for Excellence celebration is in its 21st year at MSU. It's a joint collaboration between the Alumni Association and the Bozeman Area Chamber of Commerce. The event recognizes MSU seniors who have outstanding records of achievement in academic, extracurricular activities and service to MSU and the community and their faculty mentors. The event also honors two community business leaders.
"Itıs a great connection to the community," Holland said. "Our local business community had been tremendously supportive of MSU for many years and there was a need for the townspeople to be center stage, too."
When former director Dan Rieder, '60 Ag, served as alumni director in the 1970s, his main focus was to generate excitement about MSU.
"I'd arrange meetings around the state," Rieder said. "I'd ask an alum living in the place where we would be traveling to find a place for the meeting. Then weıd bring along the president, a faculty member or a sports coach." Rieder left the Alumni Association to work for the American Simmental Association.
The MSU Alumni Association was organized by a group of faithful alumni in 1903, and today, 100 years later, the key component is the same, faithful alumni.
"Alumni are the ambassadors of the institution," said Jaynee (Drange) Groseth, '73 HHD, '91M, the current executive director. "They are critical to the future of the institution and create the fabric of Montana State. Administrators and faculty come and go, but itıs the alumni who carry the hope, traditions and loyalty of the institution."
Groseth's ties to MSU and its alumni have been a standard over the years. Before becoming alumni director in 1992, she spent 17 years in the MSU admissions office.
"When I came to alumni about half our membership were graduates for whom I had signed their initial admissions letter to MSU," she said. "I love to be that constant for people. When I get up in the morning I'm anxious to get to work and itıs hard to leave at night." Groseth says alumni often tell her, "We just assume that youıll be there for our kids as well."
The evolution in communication has been one of the greatest changes for the Alumni Association over its 100 years. In 1968 the Alumni Association had addresses for some 11,000 alumni. Today that number is over 60,000.
Communication began humbly for alumni with the MSU student newspaper carrying alumni news and announcements in the early years. In 1924 the first issue of the Collegian was published and for many decades it was the primary means of communication. Just getting out a simple mailing to alumni was a monumental task and could take up to two weeks to prepare.
"All mailings were done on an addressograph," Rieder said. "It sounded like a sheet metal shop when that machine got going. We had an employee just dedicated to working that machine. Each address was an individual metal plate that had to go through it."
A change of address that today takes a matter of seconds to change on the computer in the past took massive amounts of employee time, according to Holland. "Five different cards had to be pulled by as many as two or three different employees to make the address change," he said.
Today with the use of the Internet and e-mail, alumni are just mouse clicks away.
"I spend two hours a day responding to e-mail from alumni," Groseth said. "Recently I got a lengthy e-mail from an alum in Singapore. We would never have had these conversations without the Internet."
The Alumni Association developed its own Web site to keep MSU in front of its alums and now generates a short monthly e-mail newsletter to alumni called Montana State-ments.
"We can target news in our monthly e-newsletter that we can't do in print," Groseth said.
But even with quick-as-a-wink communication, itıs still about personal connections.
"The connection (to MSU) is made the first time a student drives into Bozeman or through an engaging classroom professor or through the friends made," she said. "That starts the connection."
But how to keep the connection, particularly when 50 percent of MSU's alums live outside the state of Montana?
Groseth says sometimes it's as simple as alums keeping their addresses up to date, or buying an MSU sweatshirt.
"My job is a friendraiser. I educate, motivate, inform and keep people connected to this university." Groseth said itıs the job of the Alumni Association to remind its graduates of their time at MSU. That's why the association works so hard on satellite parties across the country for the Cat-Griz games each year, nearly doubling the number in the last 10 years as well on Homecoming and the 50-, 60- and 70-year class reunions.
"Regardless of where they live or how often they get to campus, alumni are the heart of Montana State."